How You Made Us
by CountryGrl
Summary: A certain someone has to face up to what she's turned her family in to. An experimental piece.


**AN: This is something **_**completely **_**different from anything I have done before. It's abstract and random and obscure and the closest to angst I've got so far. But if you think about it, you'll understand it. I'm one of the densest people in the world, and **_**I**_** get it. Fair enough I wrote it, but...whatever.**

**You should know that I'm using **_**collective voice**_**. Sometimes when it says 'we' it might mean 'I'. It's something I'm experimenting with since we learned about it in drama class.**

**Disclaimer: There are two things you need to understand... 1) I don't own Malcolm in the Middle and 2) reviews are love!**

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We have something to say and we need you to listen. Our message is long overdue.

Before we start though, we want you to know that we do not blame you for all of this. Not any more. While we were young we thought you were wrong and we hated you for it, but now we have reached adulthood we know you were right. It doesn't mean that we have changed our feelings or that we know your motives.

All our lives we have conformed to you, some of us under your thumb with no escape, some of us hiding away where you cannot see us. But the shadows you have cast are not easily shaken off. These are our lives now, and you have had your part in shaping them.

And for this we thank you. In some ways you have made us stronger, and shown us what the world is like. The world will pressure us and ignore us and send us away without letting us go. The world will shape us and change us and we will have no choice. Perhaps it is better that we learnt it from you, before we were old enough to recognise the hurt.

You called us rebellious, but we only rebelled against the control you had; we could not break it. Perhaps we did not want to. Perhaps without you we would not know who we are.

Perhaps you _made _us this way.

We are the teenager, in so many ways still a boy, who was turned away by our family because we were a problem to them, a burden. We lived many miles away, surrounded and yet so very alone.

Of course we rebelled. We had no choice. Because though You were many miles away, You were still there. You held a power over us. We could not escape You, not then, not now, not even when You were the one who had turned us away.

You said it was for our own good, and perhaps that is true. We are stronger now. We have made a life for ourselves. We are independant. We have grown into a man.

And yet in many ways we are still the boy who was sent to a school of guns, far, far away.

We are the boy who lived in the shadow of one younger than him for so many years. We are not special. We are the brother of the Golden Child.

We might be clever in our own way, but You could never see that. You could see only the boy who hurt the ones who taunted him, and failed to understand the problems on the piece of paper in front of us.

We knew what our real problem was - that we could not trust in ourselves when You did not trust in us. And we have a talent, and we could be so much more, if only you had.

We are the prodigy, the genius, the child who knew things he need not. We had greatness thrust upon us, through no choice of our own.

You decided our future from the moment you decided we were special. We were isolated, different, we could never fit in after that.

When we learnt what you had in store for us we were outraged, but perhaps we should not have been. We should have known this would not end with our childhood.

But we will try to make our way in the world, because you were right when you said we would go far.

You were wrong about the direction.

We are the child who was ignored. We were not _deprived_, but neither were we treasured. Perhaps we did not want to be, for we had seen what had happened with our prodigy brother.

We were often left to fend for ourselves, and at least that is a skill we will keep through life. Sometimes, though, we wish we had learned it through choice.

We tried to make our feelings known, but yet again, we were ignored. When you did not attend our special day we wanted to feel great sadness, but we could not. All we could feel was acceptance. This is the life we lead: we will never be recognised as special by You.

We promised our brother we would be there for him, to stop him thinking that life has to be a failure, because we know that it doesn't.

But it can be.

Look at us now - all of us.

We make our own choices, but we did not choose our influences.

We are your family, Lois. Look what you have turned us in to.

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We are the boy who is still learning the ways of the world; the youngest son. There is still hope for us. Please don't screw it up.


End file.
